Incremental Borrowing Rate

The new leasing standards require companies to use either 1) the interest rate implicit in the lease, or 2) the incremental borrowing rate (IBR) to calculate the lease liability. Determining the interest rate will likely be difficult for many companies, and so it’s expected that the IBR will be more widely used. However, understanding how to calculate the IBR may also be difficult.

Key Considerations

The IBR is defined as the interest rate the lessee would have to pay to borrow the value of the asset over a similar term length and with similar security. To calculate the IBR:

Determine the corporate borrowing rate and adjust if for security as well as any foreign currency adjustment.

If the company does not have a corporate borrowing rate, use a borrowing rate for an index the company is part of, or something similar, and adjust it for the company.

Treasury will be instrumental in this process as they will likely already hold some of the data needed to calculate the IBR.

What the Experts Think

Links to Additional Resources

There is significant confusion around how to calculate the IBR as the definition has changed somewhat under ASC 842. This article covers the basics of calculating the IBR as well as the boxes companies need to check before rolling out their IBR policy.

RSM's white paper “ASC 842: Calculating the incremental borrowing rate as a lessee” presents the requirements for developing the discount rate according to the new lease accounting guidance and focuses on how an organization can determine the incremental borrowing rate for lessees.

In this paper Deloitte offers a straightforward, three step approach to calculate the incremental borrowing rate, or IBR, which will be required under the modified retrospective approach of IFRS 16 to calculate the lease liability.